XP 2025
Mon 2 - Thu 5 June 2025 Brugg - Windisch, Switzerland
Thu 5 Jun 2025 14:30 - 15:00 at 5.0A52 (Session) - Inspect & Adapt Chair(s): Niels Harre

In the pursuit of innovation, failure is an unavoidable milestone. Yet, many organizations lack practical frameworks to embrace failure as a source of growth and learning. This paper presents an experience-driven journey of creating an environment where failure is celebrated, and lessons learned from setbacks become stepping stones for continuous improvement. Our initiative, Fail Forward Conference, addresses the challenge of building a genuine “safe space” for sharing failures—moving beyond theoretical discussions to foster an open culture of innovation. Our approach began with leveraging the existing channels within the organisation i.e the Community Days, held on the first Thursday of each month, where 80% of the workforce is present as we work in a hybrid environment, we have also leverages other existing networks and initiatives. We invite employees from diverse departments—including technology, research, publishing, finance, HR, and operations—to share their stories of failure. Each session features a senior leader who exemplifies vulnerability by sharing personal setbacks, encouraging employees to do the same. Diversity is a core value of these events; we ensure a range of perspectives across gender, age, and discipline. After each story, participants reflect on insights and takeaways through an anonymous Slido poll, and the feedback is shared with speakers, creating a continuous feedback loop. The impact of this initiative has been transformative, including us winning the Judges special award at the company wide ‘Innovation Tournament’. Fail Forward has become more than an event; it’s a movement that encourages shared learning, empathy, and resilience. We aim to expand this initiative to additional locations, and outside our organization and also launch themed events such as “Leadership Failures” and “Product Failures.” Additionally, we are introducing the “First Penguin Awards” to recognize the bravery of those who take the first leap into unknown territory, akin to the penguin that risks potential danger for the reward of discovery. By sharing our experience, we invite other organizations to join us in reframing failure as a valuable teacher. Together, we can cultivate workplaces where innovation thrives through openness, reflection, and the courage to fail forward. Focus will be on the outcomes from our activity and how people can implement this themselves. We have 2 different people who started this concept hosting it at 2 different locations - India and UK, which will add to a broader perspective.

Note : We call it FailForward Conference, you can call it a meet up, a session, a talk etc. Essentially the idea is to share stories of failures and the learnings/wisdom from it in hindsight. Its not a competing conference within a conference :)

Fail Forward: An Experience Report (XP2025 - FailForward - Final.pdf)4.34MiB
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